Middle East | The Daily Star

  • Two main parties deadlocked

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his main challenger Benny Gantz were deadlocked yesterday after an Israeli general election, reports said, raising the possibility of a unity government or even the end of the premier’s long rule.

  • Trump orders more sanctions on Iran

    US President Donald Trump yesterday said he ordered a major increase in sanctions on Iran as Saudi Arabia displayed remnants of drones and missiles it said Tehran used in a crippling weekend attack on its oil facilities.

  • Israeli troopers shoot Palestinian woman

    Israeli security personnel shot a Palestinian woman who tried to stab them at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank yesterday, Israeli police said, and Palestinian officials said she died of her injury. The West Bank, among territories where Palestinians seek statehood, has

  • Philippines: 20 die in truck accident

    Twenty people, including children, were killed yesterday in the southern Philippines when the flatbed truck they were riding in

  • Iran charges three detained Australians with spying

    Iran has charged three detained Australians with spying, Tasnim news agency reported yesterday, citing judiciary spokesman

  • Israel votes as Netanyahu fights for political survival

    Israel voted in its second election in five months yesterday that will decide whether to extend Prime Minister Benjamin

  • Israel votes on Netanyahu's political survival

    Israel begins voting in its second election in five months that will decide whether to extend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's term as the country's longest-serving prime minister despite corruption allegations against him.

  • Indonesia arrests nearly 200 people

    Indonesia has arrested nearly 200 people over vast forest fires ripping across the archipelago, police said yesterday, as toxic haze sends

  • 2 Taliban shadow governors killed

    Afghan security forces, backed by US air strikes, killed two of the movement’s shadow provincial governors on Sunday, as fighting

  • OIC rejects Israeli PM’s pledge

    The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Sunday expressed its “total rejection” of the Israeli prime minister’s pre-election

  • Drones spark fires at 2 Saudi Aramco oil facilities

    Fires broke out at two Saudi Aramco oil facilities after they were struck by drones, the kingdom's interior ministry has said.

  • Iran upbeat as Trump sacks Bolton

    President Hassan Rouhani yesterday said that the United States’ “warmongering” was a failure, as Iran welcomed the sacking of hawkish US national security adviser John Bolton.

  • 31 die during stampede at Ashura rituals in Iraq's Kerbala

    At least 31 people die and another 100 are wounded during the Shi'ite Muslim religious rituals of Ashura in Iraq's southern holy city of Kerbala, in what an official at its Imam Hussein shrine describes as a stampede.

  • Lebanon’s Hezbollah says it downs Israeli drone

    The Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said yesterday it had downed and seized an Israeli drone as it flew across the Lebanese border, a week after a flash confrontation between the arch-foes.

  • Iran slams EU powers as nuclear deal unravels

    Iran’s atomic agency chief yesterday hit out at European powers, saying their broken promises gave the Islamic republic little choice

  • Muslim rebels start handing over guns

    Muslim rebels in the mainly Catholic Philippines began handing over their guns to independent foreign monitors yesterday, as part of a

  • Time running out to save nuke deal

    Iran yesterday said it was now capable of raising uranium enrichment past the 20% level and had launched advanced centrifuge

  • Taliban blast kills 12 in Kabul

    A Taliban suicide blast in the centre of Kabul killed at least 10 people and wounded more than 40 yesterday, destroying cars and shops in an area near the headquarters of Afghanistan’s Nato force and the US embassy, officials said.

  • Iran lifts all restrictions

    Iran said it would take another step away from a 2015 nuclear deal by starting to develop centrifuges to speed up its uranium enrichment but it also gave European powers two more months to try to save the multilateral pact.

  • Iran’s Rouhani rules out direct US talks

    President Hassan Rouhani yesterday ruled out holding any bilateral talks with the United States and threatened to further cut Iran’s

  • US envoy meets with Afghan president

    The US envoy leading efforts to forge a deal with the Taliban has met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul, officials said

  • Israeli troops, Hezbollah fighters exchange fire

    Israel’s military said yesterday anti-tank missiles from Lebanon targeted an army base and vehicles and that it responded with fire into

  • 100 believed killed in Saudi-led air strike: ICRC

    More than 100 people are believed to have been killed when the Saudi-led coalition fighting Huthi rebels launched an air strike on a

  • Missile attack kills 40 jihadist leaders: report

    At least 40 jihadist leaders were killed yesterday in Syria after a missile attack targeted their meeting in the northwestern province of

  • Taliban attack Kunduz city amid peace talks

    Afghan security forces “repelled” a coordinated Taliban assault on the northern city of Kunduz yesterday, President Ashraf Ghani said,

  • Regime, Russia step up assault on rebel-held Idlib

    Syria and its ally Russia have stepped up an offensive against the last big stronghold of Syrian rebels, mounting more air raids and deploying ground reinforcements including Iranian-backed militias, army defectors and residents said yesterday.

  • Northwest Syria clashes kill 51 fighters: report

    Clashes between anti-government fighters and regime forces killed 51 combattants on both sides in northwestern Syria yesterday, a war

  • Lift sanctions for talks

    Iran will not talk to the United States until all sanctions imposed on Tehran are lifted, President Hassan Rouhani said yesterday, a day after President Donald Trump said he would meet his Iranian counterpart to try to end a nuclear standoff.

  • Israel strikes Palestinian military base in Lebanon

    Israeli drone strikes hit a military position belonging to an Iranian-backed Palestinian faction in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley near the Syrian

  • Iran has no immunity anywhere: Israeli PM

    Israel yesterday said an air strike against an arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Syria that it accused of planning “killer drone

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